Emilie Grace Lavoie | From Imagination to Creation: Anne-Marie Sirois

Anne-Marie Sirois' new exhibition, Rêve Camouflé, is currently on display at the Centre des arts d’Edmundston. Her installation includes several objects referring to a family picnic. We note quite quickly that each object is completely covered with print and camouflage painting, which creates an ambiguity. There are also tree leaves on the ground and an army net hanging on the adjacent wall.

During the opening of the exhibition, Anne-Marie Sirois explained that the inspiration for this project came after seeing images of a woman accompanied by her baby fleeing a war situation. These disturbing images influenced the artist to reflect on living conditions in such a situation. Her work relates to mothers protecting their children from the hard reality of living in a war zone and covering nightmares in order to make them feel safe.

Anne-Marie’s rather playful approach invites viewers to interact with the installation. Above all, it creates an accessible space where everyone can share experiences and dreams – even when hiding and camouflage are necessary. Is this a way of exploring the space between dream and reality to find a sense of security?

Anne-Marie is from Saint-Basile, New Brunswick and is currently based in Moncton. Since the 1980s, she has been fully dedicated to her artistic practice. Her work flourishes between animation, cinema, illustration, children's books, sculpture, installation, and performance. Renowned for her animated films with the National Film Board, they have been shown at several film festivals around the world and have won several awards such as the Award of Merit at the Atlantic Festival of Film and Video in Halifax (1987), a Silver Apple Award at the National Educational Film and Video of Oakland in California (1989), and an Éloize for the artist of the year in cinéma-vidéo-télévision (2000) from the AAAPNB, to name a few.

Her artistic work delicately explores the humorous and ironic imagery that animates everyday moments, especially the objects that fill our lives. Particularly compelling is her sculptural work with irons. This series, realized over a period of several years, brings together more than one hundred irons. This series is also documented in a book, Pourquoi 100 fers, Ironic Irons. 

The irons are processed using an assembly of various recycled materials. Anne-Marie advocates harvesting found and reclaimed objects in order to give them a second life. For example, one of her iron artworks, Fer au courant, is combined with an electrical outlet. The title of the work is a play on words, implying that the iron is aware - it is informed. 

The same subtlety is found in the work Fer drainé. We see an iron with a sink drain, playing here with an Acadian expression that insists that the iron is tired... it is ‘drainé’. The iron, an object formerly associated with women's domestic work, in this case exceeds its object function and calls into question the perception of the role of the object in everyday life. As in the process of creating animated videos, this sculptural work requires dedication, discipline, and repetition to generate research.

This brings to mind works by the American artist Liza Lou. During the years 1991 to 1995, she covered an entire kitchen with beads. Through her process, she highlights the everyday domestic life by challenging herself through endurance, despite the difficulty of what is involved in the making. She makes visible the immateriality of artistic labour, much like the immateriality of women’s domestic labour. By giving dignity to a work historically unrecognized, Lou's practice references feminist discourses that consider domesticity and craft as specifically women’s productions. 

Bodies of work and practices like that of Liza Lou, and Anne-Marie, must be recognized as holding a potential for subversion, or the demonstration of difference, not necessarily accounted for in contemporary writing. They contribute to our ongoing perception of the challenges of artistic labour through discipline and ethics. They create a framework on which to think about the often hidden contributions of women throughout history. 

In the same vein, Anne-Marie Sirois uses her work to highlight the engagement of the daily by defying the difficulties related to its manufacture and artistic production. Anne-Marie Sirois is an artist devoted to her artistic practice who continues to inspire, and be inspired by, several generations. If sometimes the everyday becomes heavy, we know that Anne-Marie will be there to dazzle it with her humour and imagination unparalleled, but above all to make us think deeply about our perceptions.

Emilie Grace Lavoie, Artist/Curator/Member of 3E Collective
emiliegracelavoie.com
@emiliegracelavoie

The Rêve Camouflé exhibition will be presented at the Centre des Arts et de la Culture de Dieppe from November 21, 2019 to February 14, 2020. Anne-Marie Sirois’ new series of work, Infiltration, will be on display at the Aberdeen Cultural Centre's 2nd floor gallery from September 19 to November 30, 2019 and at the Capitol Theater Gallery in Moncton, April 24 to June 26, 2020. Not to be missed!